Interview: Ben Affleck on re-creating the 1970s for 'Argo'

The first time most people noticed Ben Affleck was as an actor, playing the sadistic Fred O'Bannion, paddle in hand, in 1993's "Dazed and Confused."

After more roles, he also became known as a writer, winning an Oscar, along with pal Matt Damon, for co-writing 1997's "Good Will Hunting," in which they both starred.

During his romance with Jennifer Lopez, he became a tabloid staple. "Bennifer" parted ways in 2004 (he's now married and has three children with Jennifer Garner), but the stench of "Gigli" lingered for a while. Then he showed up as the director of "Gone Baby Gone" in 2007 and it was time for a reassessment: This guy could direct (and act, still). "The Town" in 2010 really confirmed that; it's terrific.

"Argo," his latest film, which opens Friday, Oct. 12, is even better. It's based on the true story of six Americans who escaped the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 when militants overran it and took hostages. They hid in the Canadian Embassy until a CIA agent, played by Affleck, came up with a plan to rescue them: Pretend they are a film crew scouting locations in Iran. It's tense, it's fast-paced and it's really entertaining.

Affleck recently spoke by phone about it.

Question: The movie is freewheeling in a way that's kind of hard to describe.

Answer: I was using as inspiration a lot of movies from the '70s. But I was also telling a heart-racing thriller story and a '70s Hollywood satire and this kind of tricky, complicated CIA movie, and they're all based on the truth. So it had a kind of energy, I don't know how you would describe it. But it was going from one thing to the other; it shifts gears a lot. It was just the kind of thing that when I read the script, I thought, "I got to get a hold of this," because a director, if they do it right, can really create something special out of this movie.

Q: Even when the Hollywood types are talking, it's tense, because there's a deadline to get the people out.

A: The whole thing, having the ticking clock, as they say, of the hostages there, kept the story kind of nice and taut on the line. I like to think of it as fishing line, when the fish gets a hold of it and pulls nice and taut and you've got to reel it in to tell the story. And if you lose your perspective on that and start taking the audience for granted -- "Oh, they'll sit through this" -- you start failing. You need to keep it interesting, keep surprising the audience, keep engaging them continuously throughout the movie.

Q: With the hair and clothes, everyone certainly looked the part.

A: You have to get past the '70s hair and clothes. That was ... an obstacle we had that was like, look, people are going to come in, they're going to show up, they're going to look another era. It's an era that can be goofy. Luckily, Jaqui West, our costume designer, was really smart. She didn't want to do "Shaft," with the fur coats and bell- bottoms and stuff. It was going to be the true '70s clothes and hairdos and everything, but they would be part of the texture of the background, not the foreground telling the story, going, "Oh, isn't it cute, isn't it funny, the '70s are so crazy."

Q: It's good that you went full-on, not halfway.

A: I modeled it kind of on movies from that era, '79. I knew if a guy was going back and forth to a Muslim country, he would have a beard. Otherwise he would just stand out and it wouldn't be smart. I thought, "Who are guys with beards that look reasonably normal in 1979?" And Kurt Russell had a couple of movies, "Escape From New York" and "The Thing," where he had that kind of shaggy mane, and I thought, this looks like a real dude from this time and I'm just going to go with it. I thought, you know, I could kind of cheat it, make it look sort of normal, but it's just B.S., you know? You're not dedicating yourself to the truth of it.

Q: Moves are made in a stop-and-start fashion. How do you keep the energy going?

A: You've got to keep your energy going every take. A lot of times everybody just ate, or people were talking about something, or they got in an argument with each other and how they've got to do a love scene. But that's the job. That's what you're supposed to be good at. It's kind of like, how do you write a story when you're distracted by what's going on at home or you don't care about it or whatever? You guys just do it.

Q: Are you a tough director?

A: There's the very rare person that you get something from by kind of barking at them or riding them. When I think people do their best work is when they feel valued. They get a sense that they're participating. You create an environment that's very relaxed, and kind of risk free, so they're not going to look like an idiot, they're not going to feel bad, they're allowed to take risks. There's a small percentage of people outside of that who prosper in ways different from that. I have a hard time dealing with them. Some people want to create conflict. I think conflict is antithetical to doing good, relaxed work.

I don't even bark at people. I say, "You're going to be off the movie, this stuff can't go on." Usually it's behavior where they're putting other people down or in jeopardy or bossing other people around. I just don't accept that. You're going to treat other people with respect if you're going to work for me, because I treat people with respect, and it's just the only way to behave with any kind of honor. And if people don't do that, then I give them a warning, and we go our separate ways.

Q: It's satisfying, from an audience perspective, to see you succeed as a director.

A: Believe me, from a first-person perspective it's satisfying (laughs). There's a lot of skepticism towards actors directing in particular, and I understand that, and I understand I was part of that. Every time an actor steps up to bat, people are skeptical about whether they can get their bat on the ball. And I didn't know, frankly, if I could. I had some good instincts, I knew where I wanted to go. I don't think my first movie was a home run, but it was a single and it got me going.

Q: You went through the tabloid ringer and emerged OK. How'd that happen?

A: Hollywood, if you're lucky enough to get successful in this life, it means you're going to encounter a lot of the negative side of it as well. You've got to know that, and you've got to weather it, and you've got to have a thick skin, and you've got to work hard. That's what I've done, and I'm happy where I am now. Really happy, really lucky, working on material that's really interesting to me and challenging to me and inspiring to me. I've got a great family. I feel great, I'm healthy. I don't have a damn thing to complain about.

Actor and director Ben Affleck poses for a photograph on the red carpet at the gala for the new movie "Argo" during the 37th annual Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Friday, Sept. 7, 2012.